Starkey was a rebellious fourteen-year-old orphan who operated under the pseudonym “Stark Reality” and became the master of K9.

Starkey was an orphan and a troubled youngster. (Regeneration, Oroborus, The Last Precinct) By the age of 14, he was operating as a political agitator called “Stark Reality”. He also had followers who wanted to be his accomplices, like Jorjie. One night, Jorjie and he escaped CCPCs and stumbled into Alistair Gryffen’s house. He accidentally unplugged the Space-Time Manipulator and brought through three Jixen warriors and K9. A Jixen sprayed him with its enemy-fluid whilst K9 self-destructed, killing three Jixen. Starkey retrieved K9’s regeneration unit and he rebuilt himself. Darius Pike informed the police robots and Starkey was arrested and taken to a detention facility operated by The Department. There he was put into a Virtual reality detention facility. Jorjie hacked into his detention program and communicated with him. The surviving Jixen tried to kill him, but he escaped and K9 gave him his dog whistle, ready for adventure. (Regeneration)

As the Jixen was hunting him, Starkey had to stay at Gryffen’s house. When K9 discovered that The Jixen was heading in the direction of Dauntless Prison, he headed there to track it. Starkey wanted to help, and and asked Darius to come with him. Darius agreed but only on the condition that Starkey left when they were done. Starkey and Darius arrived in the prison, but were soon captured by CCPCs. They were thrown in their cells by Thorne, the governor of Dauntless Prison who would later become a dangerous enemy. Jorjie arrived to help, Darius gave her a keycard he swiped from Thorne. She used it to free Starkey and Darius, along with the other alien prisoners. They ran with the aliens but when Starkey looked behind them, he was confronted by a Jixen. Starkey was then saved by K9. Exploiting the Jixen’s tracking ability, Starkey put his jacket, which had Jixen slime on it, in a cell. The Jixen tracked the slime to the cell and Starkey closed the door on him. Suddenly, a Department officer arrived, who revealed himself to be a Meron and attacked K9, he advanced on Starkey, but he was saved by the Jixen who used its call to scare the Meron off. Though K9 was low on power, Starkey and him managed to unite with Jorjie, Darius, and the aliens. Darius opened the gate, and everyone went out, but were met by June Turner, Jorjie’s mother, who demanded that They returned to their cells. The Jixen struck again and attacked K9 and June. June told Jorjie to set her locking device to self-destruct, Darius grabbed it and threw it to Starkey, who attached it to the Jixen which was destroyed. He was struck by the Jixen’s energy attack, which resulted in him fainting. He awoke in Gryffen’s house where, honouring his deal with Darius, decided to leave, but not before thanking K9 for saving his life. He was vandalising a Department message when he was met by CCPCs, Starkey was soon joined by K9, who was “ready for action”. (Liberation)

When Nehetka and Geb of the Anubians, a race whom K9 had liberated in his past, arrived on Earth, Gryffen was the first to fall under their hypnotic control. He banished Darius from the house when he irritated the Anubians. Jorjie and Starkey were then hypnotised and Darius tried to convince K9 something was wrong but he was too occupied with remembering his past. Darius used Mariah to knock Geb out, using the Ankh on his chest to take control of the Anubian spacecraft and with K9, defeated the Anubians when they attempted to take over the Department and freed Starkey and the others. (Curse of Anubis)

Gryffen took Starkey in soon after. During his time At The Gryffen household, Starkey tried to find out who his parents were. Following a chance encounter with an Oroborus, Gryffen discovered that Starkey was probably the son of two alien immunologists, Charles and Marie Sobol. The Sobols had experimented on him as a baby, granting him an alien immune system, and they themselves had disappeared some time afterward. (Oroborus)

An accident in the STM resulted in Jorjie being sent to 23 November 1963. K9 and Starkey were sent to retrieve her. They encountered Darius’ great-grandfather, William Pike and saved him from the clutches of Barker, a MI6 agent with a surprising resemblance to Thorne, preventing Darius from being erased from history. Gryffen, with June’s help, was able to bring them back. (The Cambridge Spy)